


I Sought the Best of Me (but All I Showed Was What I Couldn't Be)

by MidnightMinx90



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3443366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightMinx90/pseuds/MidnightMinx90
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A drabble set to the events of Blackwall going to Val Royeaux</p><p>Spoilers for Blackwall (and the romance)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Sought the Best of Me (but All I Showed Was What I Couldn't Be)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Once" by Roo Panes

(But all I showed was what I couldn't be) 

Inquisitor/Blackwall

\----

Heart pounding, she stands before the gallows, listening to the accusations towards a man she’s never seen nor heard of until this moment.  
Something is wrong. She doesn’t know what.

The noose is placed around his neck, and just before it’s tightened, a familiar voice rings out.

And then she sees him.

Blackwall, the man she loves; the man who left her without an explanation.

 

Her heart stops beating, and for a moment everything seems frozen, suspended.  
Why is he here? Why is he stopping the execution?  
Then her heart kicks back into motion; pounding too hard and too fast and she feels like she can’t breathe.

She hears his confession and she feels sick right down to her core.

They take him away as she watches and she feels like she might faint and only the feeling of Cole, Cassandra and Dorian at her side keeps her upright. 

-

The guard said they’d taken him to the prison just by the market.

Going there is hard. Her body feels foreign, sluggish, and her footsteps heavy.

What can she possibly say to the man she loves? To the man that betrayed her and everyone else? How can she even look at him?

“That was a brave thing you did, confessing.” The words fall heavy and sound hollow even to her ears. As if they are lies; just like his name and life.

Even though she feels numb, it still hurts to see him like this; as if all life and fight has left his body and he’s given up.  
It makes sense though, after all the years of fighting and running and pretending and evading and lying.

She backs away from the bars and he falls to his knees, avoiding her gaze as silence fall over them once more.  
It’s almost as if he’s leaving his life – whoever he is – in her hands, as well as everything they were and might never again be.

Loved a lie? How can he say that?

She loves him, no matter name or rank or order. But she still feels betrayed.  
How can those feelings co-exist?

She loves his personality and voice and the way he looks at her when he thinks she can’t see and the twinkle in his eyes when she makes a joke and how his arms hold her and the way his lips and bear feel against her skin and the way they move together on the battlefield. And how they moved together when they danced in Halamshiral, and the night when he finally gave into his feelings for her.

She believes in all that, and neither of those things has anything to do with his name.

-

Cullen speaks the truth about how Rainier accepts his own fate and how she disagrees.

She needs a few days to think about his – and their – fate, but she can’t leave him here in Val Royeaux.

So she makes sure he’ll be alive until she can rescue him.

 

The journey back to Skyhold is quiet, and her mind goes back to the evasive ways he answered her questions about the Grey Wardens and his life as one.

Separating what he told her before this and what she’s come to learn now proves to be difficult, and she loses sleep over it.

 

One word reaches her he’s on his way back, she stops sleeping altogether. Instead, she looks out on the horizon, awaiting the sight of him.

 

-

 

She has made up her mind.

 

He might be guilty of the murder of innocents, but he has also saved many lives by not giving himself up sooner.

Like the men he helped when they met the first time.

 

In her eyes, the lives he’s saved makes up for those he’s taken.

 

But it’s not that simple, not in the eyes of those who don’t understand.

 

Because she knows him. Knows that he’s also told her truths.

 

And she knows that sparing his life and allowing him to still be in hers will not fix things between them.

 

He betrayed her trust when he could have confided in her eat least if he didn’t feel like telling the rest of the Inquisition.

She worries about how she can trust him again when he couldn’t trust her with something so important, although she also understands how hard it must have been for him to finally give up and give in.

 

It must have been hard, lying to everyone and never letting anyone close in all that time.

 

And then he finally let her in, just as much as she let him in to her life, and all this happened.

 

At the same time she feels relieved he finally told the world the truth, because ever since they first met it had been obvious he was carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders.

She had assumed it was the Fade and the burdens of being a Warden in the midst of their disappearances, but it had been all the lies and deceits.

 

A weaker man would have given in a long time ago, so it speaks a lot of his strength and courage to keep it going for so long.

 

It will take time for them to go back to who and what they were.

 

But for now she will save him, just like he’s saved her. Even though he doesn't know that. 

 

For now she will learn to know Thom Rainier.

 

Not everyone deserves a second chance, and the fact that she is willing to give him one is testimony to how she sees him.

 

Not as her lover, but as a man and a fighter and a redeemer.


End file.
